The Life of the Almost Aborted

November 1, 2016

My entire life abortion has been a topic I’ve worked hard to avoid. Because my entire life abortions have happened, people have argued, and abortions just keep happening.

I distinctly remember being in debate class my junior year of high school when the topic of abortion was announced. I sat and listened as the “right wing” and “left wing” of the classroom yelled back and forth about women’s rights and the definition of life.

Usually a very outspoken member of the class, I didn’t say one word that day. I put my head down to join the “sleepers” in the classroom, giving me an automatic zero.

But I wasn’t sleeping. I was crying.

I listened as my closest friend in the class, easily one of the brightest students and best debaters, gave an emotion-filled defense of a woman’s right to choose and how women shouldn’t be forced to pay for their mistakes, or the mistakes of a man.

It silenced the class. It was certainly the most well crafted argument of the day.

But my friend didn’t know that the topic of debate wasn’t really over a human rights issue that day. It was over me.

“If only she knew that she was arguing over my life,” I thought.

But she had no idea. She didn’t know that mom got pregnant with me when she was 19 and unmarried. That I wasn’t planned. That I wasn’t hoped for. That by her definition, I was a mistake.

So all I heard that day in debate was my friend tell me that my mom had every right to get rid of me. And that maybe she should have.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my mom did decide to get rid of me.

She certainly was faced with that option.

I guess another student would have simply filled my chair. Someone who was more worthy to live than I.

With tears streaming down my face, I still wonder the same thing now as I did then:

Do you know you are arguing over my life?

I cry because I’m one of the unplanned people on earth still given the chance to live – a chance to love and to be loved. And I also miss the other unplanned people that aren’t with us today. Whose lives have been ended and are being ended in this very moment.